


Ghostwritten

by ariel2me



Series: Fathers [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:53:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1763439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What is it that I’ll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn’t yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don’t prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull." (The Blind Assassin)</p><p>Stannis & Shireen, leave-taking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghostwritten

_What is it that I’ll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn’t yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don’t prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull. (The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood)_

Stannis & Shireen, leave-taking.

A companion piece to [A Sum of His Parts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1203619), but this also works fine as a stand-alone thing, if you don’t want to read that one. (ASOHP is from Shireen’s POV, this one is from Stannis’ POV)

\--------------------------

“My father died screaming,” he told his daughter, during one of his few remaining lucid moments.

“How could you have known that? You saw his ship sank. You didn’t see him die,” she pointed out, gently. _Don’t cry_ , he wanted to say, to this daughter who was waiting for her own father to die, but of course there was no need for that at all. She was his daughter after all; he had trained her too well.

 _Windproud_ was the name of that sunken ship, but as a girl, Shireen had more than once confused it with the name of her father’s goshawk. _Proudwind_ , she had mumbled, that shy, seemingly timid, but in her own way, fearless little girl. No, there was no _Proudwind_ , only _Proudwing_ , the damaged bird he found, the one he nursed back to health, the one he let go.

The one he abandoned, like he would one day abandon his principles, along with his sense of who he was, who he should be, and who he needed to be.

“I heard him in my sleep. I hear him still,” he insisted, about the father who was long dead, about the grandfather Shireen never knew.

_I should have told her more about her grandparents._

_I should have told her about the time I was loved; loved for no other reason than that I was myself, Stannis, just as I was._

Instead, she had heard too much about all the time her father was despised, overlooked, disregarded.

All the _should-haves_. The list was endless, overtaken only by all the _shouldn’t-haves_.

“There is no justice from the gods,” he muttered. _Any god_.

“Justice flows from men, and from the law,” Shireen said, repeating his oft-spoken words. Humoring him, he thought.  

He shook his head. “I don’t mean _that_ , not this time.”

She took his hand and asked, “What _do_ you mean, Father?”

“They did nothing wrong, my mother and father. They were coming home to their sons. Was that a sin so great, deserving of a horrible death?”

They died a horrible, lonely death, while their son - he with countless wrongs of omissions and commissions to his name – waited to die in his bed, attended by a daughter who, despite everything, unaccountably, miraculously, did not seem to despise him, as she had every right to do.

Where is the justice in that?

His daughter did not know him for what he truly was, he thought, not certain whether relief, or disappointment, was the thing foremost in his mind.

Or she only saw what she wanted to see, blinding herself to the rest.

That was unfair to Shireen, and giving her too little credit. She had never shared his talent for self-deception, or his capacity for holding on tightly to the notion that he was completely so very disillusioned that he had no illusion left at all; a notion which turned out to be, he was finally forced to admit, here at the end of all things, his biggest illusion of all.

Perhaps she _did_ see, and yet refused to draw the obvious conclusions.

More likely, she _had_ drawn the obvious conclusions, and out of - _what was it? Compassion? Pity? Love? Oh but how could be it be love, of all thing?_ – declined to let him see that she had done so.

 _We make do. We make amends, and we make do_ , she whispered in his ear.

She told him a story about a man who was many things at once. _It’s possible to love the father, admire the king, and condemn the man that he once was, all at the same time._

He made her promise not to forget. Not just the father, or the king, but most of all _that_ man, that man in all his inglorious follies and his misguided convictions.

 


End file.
